Rumor: Next-gen iPhone to feature 4.6-inch Retina Display - Page 2

That is VERY hard to believe. For most people, a 4.6" display is laughably large, and simply unwieldily. I've used a GN and it was very difficult to handle with 1 hand. I predict the next iPhone to be 4". No more.

Has anyone seen the Galaxy Nexus? It uses a horrible PenTile display and huge.

Have YOU seen the Galaxy Nexus screen? I think you're confusing displays with the big pixels on the much lower resolution screens that Pentile originally appeared on "back in the day", relatively speaking. The Galaxy Nexus is not your fathers' Pentile.http://www.anandtech.com/show/5310/s...wich-review/11

Like most on here I can't see this happening. I have no desire for a significantly larger screen which would necessitate a bigger form factor. A very small increase in screen size, one which would still fit in the current iPhone dimensions, would be welcome.

The only way I can see 4.6" is if Apple moves away from the single model approach to a small range of iPhones.

9to5 has posted a poll on what iPhone users would like to see for screen size on the next iPhone. After 60K+ votes, over 60% of the respondents would accept a larger iPhone if they could have a 4" or larger display. In fact more voters want a much larger display. 4.3" or bigger, than leaving it as is. Going by those results, unscientific tho they may be, it's still a good indicator IMO that most iPhone users aren't particularly happy with the relatively small screens on the current model.http://9to5mac.com/2012/03/21/could-...y/#more-154581

9to5 has posted a poll on what iPhone users would like to see for screen size on the next iPhone. After 60K+ votes, over 60% of the respondents would accept a larger iPhone if they could have a 4" or larger display. In fact more voters want a much larger display. 4.3" or bigger, than leaving it as is. Going by those results, unscientific tho they may be, it's still a good indicator IMO that most iPhone users aren't particularly happy with the relatively small screens on the current model.http://9to5mac.com/2012/03/21/could-...y/#more-154581

I think a larger display is certainly in Apple's plans.

Wellif Apple goes over 4" I guess I'll be keeping my 4S until they stop updating software for it.

My prediction:
Apple will go with a 4-4.1" display at a 16:9 ratio. This maintains the same width as the existing iPhones, and therefore their one-handed usability. The phone may be taller, but the existing top bezel is unnecessarily large, so they could eat into it to minimize the overall size change. The horizontal pixel count would stay the same, but the vertical one would increase. Existing iPhone apps already have to take vertical length changes into account (think the "you're in a call" and the "device connected to hotspot" banners), so many would work already, and the rest could be fixed with minimal changes. The extra height of the display could also afford a (slightly) thicker status bar across the top, opening up possibilities for new notification and/or multitasking features. The extra height available to apps would greatly increase usability when the on-screen keyboard is shown (the one major drawback of the current iPhone aspect ratio).

I guess if you have to use phone size to make up for feelings of inferiority over size of more important things, I'm happy that you've found a consolation.

Many Apple consumers like the current size. But when it comes to brand name, they very much want it to be Apple. It is the brand name that makes up for feelings of inferiority.

You can be Justin Long or Albert Einstein just by shelling out a couple of hundred bucks at the ATT store! I'm a MAC and I THINK DIFFERENT! I'm a CREATIVE! And everybody you come across knows it just by your purchase decisions.

I'm glad that Apple products are so appealing to so many people. They overcome destructive emotions in an easy to acquire manner. Thank goodness the prices are such that pretty much anybody can buy one or more.

Many Apple consumers like the current size. But when it comes to brand name, they very much want it to be Apple. It is the brand name that makes up for feelings of inferiority.

You can be Justin Long or Albert Einstein just by shelling out a couple of hundred bucks at the ATT store! I'm a MAC and I THINK DIFFERENT! I'm a CREATIVE! And everybody you come across knows it just by your purchase decisions.

I'm glad that Apple products are so appealing to so many people. They overcome destructive emotions in an easy to acquire manner. Thank goodness the prices are such that pretty much anybody can buy one or more.

And it never occurred to you that people buy Apple products because they like them?

As always, one has to wonder about the motivation of someone who comes to an Apple forum with no intent other than bashing Apple products. I can understand someone who likes Android, for example, posting on an Android forum about how great Android is. What I'll never understand is someone who comes to a forum that's about a product they don't like, don't use, and will never buy - simply to troll.

I hope it pays well.

"I'm way over my head when it comes to technical issues like this"Gatorguy 5/31/13

The retina display was introduced in 2010, and developers quickly accomadated the higher resolution. I don't think it is that big of a deal.

There are plenty of things you haven't accounted for. For starters, only some developers adopted quickly. A year later I still had app updates that were just getting support for the Retina Display.

Even now with the iPad very few of my apps have been updated for the Retina Display. Developers should have seen this coming from the start, yet there are apps that won't work correctly on the new iPad. Here is a prime example of not following Apple's stupid walled garden, Gestapo guidelines.

But that's not even the crux of the issue. With the iPhone and iPad the display size and aspect ratio remained the same. It was a doubling of the resolution. If we're talking about a 4.6" phone we are talking about a new resolution AND a new aspect ratio. Why?

960x640 is not Retina Display at 4.6" for a normal viewing distance as the PPI is only 251. That's less than the iPad which you do hold farther from your face.

You can't use the 3:2 aspect ratio for a 4.6" display and expect it to be comfortable in the hand. The iPhone can get bigger but to maintain being a one handed device that can be used with one thumb the aspect ratio would have to be change. Even the 16:9 of Android-based phones would make it too wide IMO.

So we have a new resolution, new aspect ratio and a new size which means Apple and devs have to start over. One small solution could be to make the PPI the about the same as the iPhone 4S so that apps will be represented pixel-for-pixel on the larger display like on the iPad, except be the accurate size, until apps are rewritten, but if you've ever used iPhone apps on the iPad it's a pretty bad experience.

This bot has been removed from circulation due to a malfunctioning morality chip.

The only way I can see 4.6" is if Apple moves away from the single model approach to a small range of iPhones.

I agree and I think two iPhone models (screen sizes 3.3" and 4.5"-ish) inevitable. There is a huge market for large phones. 4.5"-5.3" phones sell quite well. The 4.6" iPhone, considering aspect ratio, will be somewhere in-between that, approaching the Galaxy Note size. I would buy such iPhone in a heart beat.

My Galaxy Nexus already has a 4.65 inch display (as shown in the article), though it's of the much more vibrant, power-efficient AMOLED variety.

Of course this article is based upon a 'rumor' so we'll likely never see anything remotely close on the 'new iPhone'.

Galaxy Nexus uses a subpar AMOLED display. Samsung (or Google) opted to shaft users and give them a lower pixel-density display with an inferior color matrix while the Galaxy S2 gets to enjoy the much superior "Super AMOLED Plus" display. The nexus display is similar to the AMOLED displays we're seeing flood the mobile market on cheap windows/android phones.

In my personal experience, you can't even compare these vanilla AMOLED display to the retina display. I used a nexus for two weeks, the size was absurd, the level of poor build quality is logic-defying (the battery cover?! are they kidding?!), and the new UI almost completely negates the increase in display real estate. Ice Cream Sandwich no longer using physical buttons means that a significant portion of the screen is ... buttons. Seems like a real waste of the display and as of yet is not being used in any sort of interesting way.

A slightly bigger screen with same resolution and aspect ratio would be nice. Maybe a 4.0" but nothing bigger. I still want it to fit comfortably in my shirt pocket.

This.

Maybe I'm just getting old, but I find that some iPhone apps use text that's too small for me to read. A small increase in physical size without changing the number of pixels would make everything a little bit bigger and give me a better shot at being able to use the device.

If the resolution of a future iPhone increases it will force developers to re-write their apps and most likely they will choose to use the extra space to squeeze in more information. Thus the readability issue would be as bad or worse than it is today.

Wearing reading glasses to use your phone is not an acceptable option.

As others have noted, many large Android devices have tall, narrow screens. Apple's adherence to a 3:2 ratio puts an upper limit on how large the device can be. However, that limit is probably higher than most pundits think it is. I see lots of tiny Asian women on the subway using big Android devices. If their hands can cope then so could yours.

A slightly bigger screen with same resolution and aspect ratio would be nice. Maybe a 4.0" but nothing bigger. I still want it to fit comfortably in my shirt pocket.

The current iPhone is 2.3 inches wide, while a 4.6 inch screen is 2.55 inches wide. Apple could increase screen size to 4.6 and the device width only a few tenths of an inch if they were to decrease the bezel width.

What if... There was no home button, and the 'screen' actually used up the entire front face of the phone? Then 4-4.5" would be right about the current device size yes? Old apps would look the same, and new apps could (maybe) use the extra real estate? No I've not got any idea how they'd solve technical problems with the facetime camera, microphone or earpiece.

I seem to recall the head of VISA and even Jobs confirming that Apple/Visa are working on an RFID payment system for the 'next' iPhone (though if memory serves correctly, this was before the 4S release). The olympics are on this summer. This is an ENORMOUS marketing opportunity for Apple and Visa. Whilst they surely don't want to rush a half baked product to market, they've had a lot of years to plan this. Yes Apple are big, but VISA (and card payment generally) are an 800lb gorilla. My vote is for a pre-olympics delivery date on the new iPhone. The early iphone adopters are a good match for people likely to be traveling to London in July/August.

A few theoretical stats, assuming they keep the 2:3 aspect ratio and can't do too much about the bezel size:

If the iPhone was the same width as a Galaxy S2, it would have a 3.8" screen.

If the iPhone was the same width as a Galaxy Nexus, it would have a 4.1" screen.

If the iPhone was the same width as a Galaxy Note, it would have a 4.7" screen.

Therefore, what this rumour is suggesting, is the new iPhone is a Galaxy Note competitor, which just looks ridiculous! Ain't gonna happen!

It is a pity that Apple made the decision to go with 2:3 to begin with. With a phone, the screen size is constrained by the need to keep the phone itself within reasonable width. But as all the Android & WP7 manufacturers have shown, by going 16:9, they can have phones no wider than an iPhone and still have more screen real-estate to play with.

I know going 16:9 now would introduce unwelcome fragmentation, but I really think they need to bite the bullet eventually and admit they got it wrong.

Nearly five inch screen? Why would Apple do that? Unlike some companies that builds every screen size to see what sticks, Apple has focus, and they introduce one new iPhone model at a time, which is their mainstream smartphone product.

I strongly feel that 16:9 is not the optimum ratio for working on a smartphone, tablet or computer screen, and I hope Apple continues to avoid it, but they are starting to use it on some of their displays (the 11" MacBook Air and their 27" iMac and Cinema Displays).

A few theoretical stats, assuming they keep the 2:3 aspect ratio and can't do too much about the bezel size:

If the iPhone was the same width as a Galaxy S2, it would have a 3.8" screen.

If the iPhone was the same width as a Galaxy Nexus, it would have a 4.1" screen.

If the iPhone was the same width as a Galaxy Note, it would have a 4.7" screen.

Therefore, what this rumour is suggesting, is the new iPhone is a Galaxy Note competitor, which just looks ridiculous! Ain't gonna happen!

It is a pity that Apple made the decision to go with 2:3 to begin with. With a phone, the screen size is constrained by the need to keep the phone itself within reasonable width. But as all the Android & WP7 manufacturers have shown, by going 16:9, they can have phones no wider than an iPhone and still have more screen real-estate to play with.

I know going 16:9 now would introduce unwelcome fragmentation, but I really think they need to bite the bullet eventually and admit they got it wrong.

I think Apple made a mistake going with a 3:2 ratio. When you put a Motorola Atrix (16:9) next to an iPhone (3:2), the iPhone looks like it has tons of wasted space above and below the screen.

It would be interesting for Apple to standardize on a new ratio, but it would be a lot of work for developers. I was hoping that Apple would kill the iPhone 3GS when they introduced the 4S. That way 320x480 would have become "legacy" and the door would be open for a new resolution to join 640x960 in the near future.

Unfortunately we're stuck with 320x480 for years to come. I expect there will still be people in Canada with an iPhone 3GS under contract in September 2015.

Android phones come in 5 different aspect ratios and Android tablets in 3.

The most square phones are the ultra compact ones like the HTC Wildfire at 4:3. Next come the compact ones like the Galaxy Q at 3:2. Then there's a huge number of Samsung and HTC phones using the 5:3 ratio. Next is the Galaxy Note's 16:10, the "golden ratio", followed by the Amazon Kindle Fire's 1.707 and finally the Galaxy Nexus and most Motorola and Sony Ericsson phones at 16:9.

The following screen sizes are all available today or were at some point in the last 18 months.

Phones and tablets are fundamentally different. For a tablet, it doesn't really matter if it's 5" or 6" wide, so it's not an issue to adopt the optimum aspect ratio for that kind of devise. But for a phone where the 'pocketability' is a large constraining factor, the difference between 2.3" and 2.6" wide is very much an issue. So maybe here, having a thinner aspect ratio is a worthwhile compromise.

Think about it. Two identical sized phones, one has a 3.8" screen at 3:2 and one has a 4.3" screen at 16:9. The latter has all the screen of the former plus a bit extra on the side. That extra space is gravy. A developer doesn't have to use it, but it's there if they want to. Or at least it is for phones from Android affiliated manufacturers. But for the iPhone, it has to do without.